


it's dripping from your eyes, your beautiful goodbye

by pharadoxly



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: "spending your life trying to remember your soulmate" kind of sadness, Angst, Flashbacks, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Sex, Injury, Jearmin Week 2015, M/M, Past Romance, Past life, Reincarnation, Sadness, prompt: blood sweat and tears, this will probably hurt you, yes i have many regrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-08
Updated: 2015-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-13 16:13:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4528605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pharadoxly/pseuds/pharadoxly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He<em> kisses his mouth, his hands, his hair</em><br/>like he<em> doesn’t need to breath.</em><br/>They’re sensations from a life ago and don’t always make sense.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's dripping from your eyes, your beautiful goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everybody! \ò-ò  
> i'm... english is not my native language, so please be patient. please. i've nothing else to say in my defense.  
> lyrics are from "Beautiful Goodbye" by Maroon 5 which is an amazing song, please listen to it.
> 
> i want to thank every sad anime opening that ever made me feel miserable. they've made this possible

  
  
  
  
He _kisses his mouth, his hands, his hair  
like _ he _doesn’t need to breath._  
They’re sensations from a life ago and don’t always make sense.

––––––––––  
  
 

His mother is cutting his hair. The bedroom is mid-afternoon warm, penumbral.  
He looks at himself in a fragment of the mirror hung above the wooden drawer, both belonged to his grandma. The mirror’s frame is broken, a corner is shattered. But they keep it. It’s like Sara’s reflection is still imprinted there, somewhere beyond the surface.  
It makes Armin wonder if something, like a book, or a sentence, or an old piece of furniture will one day remind his children of him, like the mirror reminds his mother of Sara.   
Light strands are falling to the ground around him.  
  
(clever words can’t help me now)  
 

_“It’s blood” the boy observes, his attention focused on Jean’s reddening temple. He quickly wipes his own fingers on the uniform’s jacket. Jean is idly touching the wounded spot. “Stop. Let me clean it.”  
That’s what he does, carefully and so, so gently._

  
_“Amazing. We’ve been soldiers for years, and you manage to hurt yourself falling off your horse.”_

  
_The wound heals. Eventually they heal together._  
  
(I grip you tight but you’re slipping out)

  
It’s just a clichè.  
It happens when he trips over the stairs and ends up with a long cut on the right side of his head. The pain is bearable and blood slowly streams down his cheek. He has always bled a lot, like it’s in his genetic system.   
In front of Sara’s mirror, Armin stands. He’s just standing.  
Lifting a hand to his face, curious, he touches.  
Cold and warmth mix on his fingertips and he wonders why blood feels so reassuring.   
  
(and I remember your eyes were so bright)

  
  
_Jean’s body moves, shakes, and responds, and his own does the same like it wasn’t shaped for anything else._  
_Rough, tasting palms and a thousand shivers all feel addicting on Armin’s skin. They’ve done everything all over again and again but it’s thrilling and new nonetheless. Every time they gasp, touch, shaking like earthquakes, between one heartbeat and another._  
 _They listen to each other, sliding bodies so close it’s impossible to draw a border line._

  
 _Armin thinks people like them were made to taste love in the salty sweat on their lips._  
  
(and I can’t take it)

  
  
Armin turns fourteen and feels half-empty, like every day before and after.  
He can’t find him. He can’t remember him.  
But his soul knows he existed (and maybe, hopefully, he still does) because there’s no other way to explain the sourness of this life, of amusement parks and computers, and cellphones and strawberry cakes and school trips to California.  
He looks straight at his grandmother’s mirror, and the feeling of loss grows and grows in his chest because there’s nobody in that place behind him and there are no hands on his shoulders and no mouth on his head. His heart is beating alone and his soul is older than the mirror itself. And it hurts. It’ll always do.   
  
(you’re even perfect when you cry)

  
  
_Armin is aware of the sobs caged inside his chest but lets tears fill the emptiness behind his eyes. “There’s nothing I can do.”_  
_The silence that follows is unreadable._  
 _“We’ll all die.”_  
 _“That’s not your fault.”_  
 _He lifts his head, just lightly, because this time he’s tired. He buries holes through the darkness, and looks at the boy who’s keeping him close. That bed was made for one. “I want to stay with you forever.”_  
 _Jean doesn’t always know what’s the right thing to say, but he tries. “That’s not your fault either.”_  
  
(and now I’m kissing your tears goodnight)

  
  
He watches as his parents sacrifice everything they don’t need to make him go to college, because Armin is smart but, unfortunately, they don’t have money.   
He watches when they find an old woman, with wrinkles around her eyes and huge glasses and a wide smile, who’s willing to take Sara’s old, broken, useless mirror. They pack it, grateful, and she assures she’ll repair  _“him”_  and find  _“him”_ a new owner; she speaks like the object has got a personality.   
Armin figures he’s not less insane, and lets  _“him”_  go.

  
He can’t help but miss the only thing in the world that made him feel like his criptic memories –– nothing more than static, blurred images and clichès –– were real, like there’s someone out there, waiting to be found. But time ticks  away like a scythe and there’s really nothing he can do.   
  
(It’s dripping from your eyes)

  
  
_The end of their world bursts in front of their eyes, noise deafens everything and anything into silence, and their hands grip each other like they’ve done endless times._  
_There are no tears, no sounds, but acknowledging glances towards a bleeding, crumbling horizon. Jean looks at him and they both know they are scared._  
 _This is not the death they had been expecting._  
 _But it doesn’t matter._  
 _Armin’s last, little smile is of the most sincere color._  
  
(your beautiful goodbye –– bye, bye, bye)

  
  
When he’s thirty-two he’s long since given up, but he still looks at the ocean from his closed window and feels sadness, loss. Neither lover he’s had can press hard enough, make him bleed the right way, kiss the scars he doesn’t have anymore.  
That was  _the one_  and he’s lost him a long time ago.

  
This life, however, goes on.  
  
(and I can’t take it)

  
  
He can’t remember an autumn bleaker than this. Colourless leaves smother the ground outside his small, yellow terraced house. He can’t move as he once used to, so he preferes to seat in the portico, letting the soft breeze remind him of things that will never come back. Armin’s not anymore scared to be blown away.  
With his walking stick and  _green_  coat, an autumn day finds him looking around in an antique store. It’s in the middle of town but the sound of passing cars is blandly shut out the wooden door.  
He can blend in with the room. His body is old by now, after all.  
The owner approaches him but is courteously dismissed with a few words. So Armin is left alone with dust, and memories, and old objects  _(like him)_.

And between those objects and pasts he will never be a part of, he finds it.  
It’s an istant, a recognition, a spark of joy and melancholy at the same moment. He will not remember the feeling later, so pure it’s quite istantly forgotten, but it’s enough to feel it now.  
He buys the piece and takes it home. Now it’s intact and unscarred but the memories are not lost. Sara’s suave face isn’t there anymore –– that could be seen just by his mother, and she died many years ago. What Armin sees, once comfortably seated in the chair under his portico,  _somewhere beyond the surface_ , is familiar and unknown.  
A young man, slim face, somehow offhand smile, and chestnut eyes so, so bewitching that make Armin feel like he couldn’t possibly  _not_  be in love with them.   
The young man is smiling, not even at him, and it’s private and intimate like fewer and fewer things in life tend to be.  
But incredibly, painfully distant; so even if he lifts a hand and touches, presses, desperate, he can’t reach  _him_. Even now, he can’t remember  _his_  name, or what they went through in that forgotten world, or how his voice sounded like. Armin has to wipe his own tears.  
There was someone but he can’t find him, not even now.

  
The mirror finds a place hung above the drawer, in his bedroom. And it stays there.  
  
(you’re even perfect when you cry)

  
  
––––––––––

He  _talks loud enough for the sun to hear,  
but _ he _whispers, when there’s nothing but touching bodies –– stained with blood, sweat or tears –– to waiting ears._  
_They’re sensations from a life ago and don’t always make sense._

 _––––––––––_  
  
  
  
  
  
 

**Author's Note:**

> There's not always need for an happy ending.  
> I hope you're ok (I'm not) and remember that kudos etc. are super appreciated and comments are gold to me!!  
> Thank you and I hope you have a great day!


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